Faith: know thy place

The feminist critique of religion should not appease the strident voices which label secularism as fundamentalist or militant by promoting a secularism that has had its teeth drawn. Feminists must continue to argue for a robust secularism and the right to stand against religion, argues Rahila Gupta

Baroness Sayeeda
Warsi set off a storm of comment in Britain with her recent article in the Daily Telegraph with her plea that faith should have a
place at the table and that it is being edged out by militant secularism.

This is not borne
out by the facts. The increasing role for faith based organisations in the
provision of public services, the increasing number of faith schools, and
religious groups applying to run the so-called Free Schools, the continued presence
of Church of England Archbishops and bishops in the House of Lords are just
some examples of a very dominant presence in the public square. Baroness Warsi complains that "Secular fundamentalists are saying that people of faith
shouldn't have a voice in the public sphere…" Of course, they should be
part of the conversation, but religious voices are often raised in a bid to
silence other voices, to quash the equalities agenda and other people’s rights.
Archbishop Carey is campaigning against gay
marriage, Christian groups such as Christian Concern for Our Nation are opposing adoption by
gay couples, and Nadine Dorries, Conservative MP for Mid-Bedfordshire, has been looking for ways of
undermining women’s access to abortion by restricting provision of abortion. They
do have a voice in the public sphere, the funds to make sure their concerns are
aired in court, and access to put forward their views in Parliament. Those
campaigning on sexual freedoms are making, and must make, a robust case for
their rights.

It is particularly
disturbing that Warsi should celebrate her visit to Pope Benedict XV1 on 14
February, a man who stands accused of covering-up child
sexual abuse, as, ‘more than a Valentine’s Day “love in” with our Catholic
neighbours’ and about recognising the
‘deep’ role of faith in Britain. Warsi argues that aggressive secularism is being
introduced by stealth.
Most of her examples, such as the ruling against Bideford Council starting its
official meetings with prayers, are legal judgements openly issued and
discussed in public – where is the stealth?

Some of the attacks
on secularism are coming from Christian quarters worried that the haemorrhaging
of the faithful from the churches undermines their legitimacy. But why has
Warsi become the poster girl for a muscular Christianity? As co-chairman of the Conservative Party, she might just be
doing her job, toeing the party
line. Sunny Hundal argues in the New
Statesman journal that an influx of social conservatives into the party - some with links to the
Christian new right - is exercising right wing pressure. As her
past public statements have shown, she is also concerned about ‘islamaphobia’,
in particular her comment that prejudice against Muslims has "passed the dinner-table test" i.e. that
it is socially acceptable to make anti-Muslim statements. By expanding
the public space for Christianity, by condemning bigotry against religion, it
allows other religions, especially minority religions, more freedom to
flourish. This is a view that has been iterated by David
Cameron himself, ‘It is actually easier for people to believe and practice
other faiths when Britain has confidence in its Christian identity.’

The problem with
opening up public space for the hegemonic religion is how do you perpetuate its
hegemony without appearing to be Christian- centric or racist? How do you drown
out competing claims from minority religions in the name of diversity and
equality? Secularism is our only refuge from this cacophony. For a whole host of
political, cultural and historical reasons, all religions do not have the same
respect for human rights and equalities, and even within religions there are
dissenting voices. The paradox is that it is the secular principles
underpinning British institutions and the legal system which allow us to
counter some of the more orthodox and retrogressive aspects of religion.

At some level, Warsi
herself recognises the importance of secular institutions. Recently, away from
the public gaze, she organised a high level meeting, at which the British Home
Secretary, Theresa May, and the Attorney General, Rt Hon Dominic Grieve MP, were
present with academics and women's groups to discuss the question of why
vulnerable Muslim women who have religious marriages in Britain do not go on to
have a civil marriage. The stated
objective of the meeting was the need to protect those Muslim women who are
only afforded the much weaker rights of cohabitees by virtue of their religious
marriages. According to the participants, it transpired that Warsi’s real
concern was the practice of polygamy within the Muslim community which had
implications for the welfare benefits budget and immigration numbers. As a
religious marriage contracted abroad is recognised for the purposes of
immigration, Warsi was concerned that men were bringing in several wives and
looking for ways to end this practice. As there is very little research or
evidence to support the argument that polygamy is widely practised, or on the
increase in the Muslim community, the general view was that any attempts to
clamp down on it may be seen as discriminatory. The Conservatives turned out to
be true to type – more concerned with cutting immigration and benefits than
with the protection of Muslim women. There was very little appetite among them
for giving religious authorities a greater say in family law issues, which
seems to be in keeping with their support for religious claims so long as they
fit in with the state’s agenda.

According to academics Steve Bruce and
Tony Glendinning, ‘The absence of a state church in the USA, for
example, owes far more to the fact that the early colonies had a variety of
state churches and hence could not agree on which it should be than it does to
secularism among the founding fathers.’ And that is why secularism should be
welcomed by religionists – because it avoids religious discord by privileging
none. In some quarters though, the defence of secularism, like that put forward by Julian Baggini, is
so watered down (much like the general liberal response to Richard Dawkins)
that it seems to exclude any criticism of religion. He asserts that neutrality
is at the core of secularism and he defines neutrality as ‘neither standing for
or against religion’. I would like to argue for a more robust secularism- as
opposed to militant - and reclaim the right to stand against religion. Most
religious books and practices are at the core, anti-woman: the creation myth of
Christianity and the uncleanness of women in Islam and Hinduism to name a few
examples. The closer believers adhere
to the Book, the more likely they are to be damned as fundamentalist. Whilst it
is generally acceptable to critique fundamentalism, the same freedom is not
available to critiques of religion itself. But the Book never goes away, it
remains the guiding principle, the context which frames more or less
conservative interpretations depending on the social context of the times. So a
critique of religion from the point of view of women remains a valid one and
the demand for keeping religion out of the state and public life, equally
valid. Sheila Jeffreys’ new book, Man's Dominion.The
Rise of Religion and the Eclipse of Women's Rights revives feminist
criticism that religion is the founding ideology of patriarchy.

This
is an important reminder at a time when feminists are shrinking away from their
critique of religion because women’s rights have been used disingenuously to
justify imperialist adventures into Afghanistan, or by the right wing in Europe
to restrict immigration because of the illiberal traditions of religious
minorities. Sukhwant Dhaliwal, in her PhD thesis, Religion, Moral Hegemony and Local
Cartographies of Power: Feminist reflections on religion in local politics, points
to the ‘growing consensus within feminist theory that seeks a distance from
secularism, that emphasises solidarities with faith based mobilisations and
seeks to defend religious minority struggles’.
In their understanding of the intersectionality between race, religion
and sexual freedoms, academics like Judith Butler, argue that the struggle for sexual freedoms has
become a marker of modernity and secularism, and has been used to damn and
exclude religious minorities. This is the old anti-racist argument being
resurrected in more sophisticated dress, an argument that minority women
thought they had laid to rest through their simultaneous struggles for greater
freedoms within their communities, and against the racism of the wider society.
It is possible to face both ways: to oppose imperialist adventures or racist
immigration agendas and to fight illiberal traditions, whether in dominant or
minority religions. That is the ground on which minority women stand.

We
should not seek to appease these strident voices which label secularism as
fundamentalist or militant by promoting a secularism which has had its teeth
drawn. Their shrillness comes from the lack of substance in their arguments.
Let’s not be intimidated by the noise they make and continue to develop our
critique of religion.

A place at the
dining table, yes. A place in the public square, jostling with other beliefs, yes. At the roundtable, no.

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